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On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal
A strident argument about the dangers of compromise in art, politics, and everyday life
On Compromise is an argument against contemporary liberal society’s tendency to view compromise as an unalloyed good―politically, ethically, and artistically. In a series of clear, convincing essays, Rachel Greenwald Smith discusses the dangers of thinking about compromise as an end rather than as a means. To illustrate her points, she recounts her stint in a band as a bass player, fighting with her bandmates about “what the song wants,” and then moves outward to Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl movement, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Poetry magazine, the resurgence of fascism, and other wide-ranging topics.
Smith’s arguments are complex and yet have a simplicity to them, as she writes in a concise, cogent style that is eminently readable. By weaving examples drawn from literature, music, and other art forms with political theory and first-person anecdotes, she shows the problems of compromise in action. And even as Smith demonstrates the many ways that late capitalism demands individual compromise, she also holds out hope for the possibility of lasting change through collective action. Closing with a piercing discussion of the uncompromising nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and how global protests against racism and police brutality after the murder of George Floyd point to a new future, On Compromise is a necessary and vital book for our time.
On Compromise is an argument against contemporary liberal society’s tendency to view compromise as an unalloyed good―politically, ethically, and artistically. In a series of clear, convincing essays, Rachel Greenwald Smith discusses the dangers of thinking about compromise as an end rather than as a means. To illustrate her points, she recounts her stint in a band as a bass player, fighting with her bandmates about “what the song wants,” and then moves outward to Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl movement, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Poetry magazine, the resurgence of fascism, and other wide-ranging topics.
Smith’s arguments are complex and yet have a simplicity to them, as she writes in a concise, cogent style that is eminently readable. By weaving examples drawn from literature, music, and other art forms with political theory and first-person anecdotes, she shows the problems of compromise in action. And even as Smith demonstrates the many ways that late capitalism demands individual compromise, she also holds out hope for the possibility of lasting change through collective action. Closing with a piercing discussion of the uncompromising nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and how global protests against racism and police brutality after the murder of George Floyd point to a new future, On Compromise is a necessary and vital book for our time.
208 pages, Paperback
Published August 3, 2021
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291 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 28, 2021
"More fundamentally, it is wrong to believe that political partisanship is the consequence of a focus on identity. Mouffe shows us the opposite: political partisanship and identitarian claims are more prone to essentialism when a focus in instrumental compromises empties the public sphere of the opportunity to engage in substantive political conflicts. And this depoliticization has led to a general situation in which politics is envisioned in moral terms, as a matter of right and wrong, of good people and bad people, rather than a matter of negotiation over how power will be allocated in a society" (18).
"Kind of Blue is a perfect dinner party sound track because it activates a feeling of nostalgia for a certain type of college-educated, left-leaning dinner party-holding, New-Yorker-reading kind of person" (42).
"In THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EMOTION, Sara Ahmed argues that sticky objects are those that take on emotion as they move from person to person, gathering histories--both real and imagined--and dense, often hidden, associations that carry with them intense feelings. What sticks, she suggests, is not so much the work itself, but the feelings that become attached to the work" (54).
"Neoliberalism was becoming more than a set of policies; it was changing the horizon of expectations for individuals in a range of activities. As institutions were explicitly privatized or made to adhere to free market principles, it became harder to imagine that one's activities could meaningfully resist the market" (66).
"Writing in German during the golden age of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt develops his concept of the political in response to what he sees as a failure of liberalism. This moment, which saw the institution of the ill fated League of Nations and imagined that the end of the Great War would lead to the advent of a new age of peace, is one that Schmitt sees as an age of 'neutralizations and depoliticizations,' of the attempt to erase long-standing oppositions between friends and enemies.
This erasure, he explains, is accomplished by the substitution of two liberal tendencies in place of the political.
First, liberalism sees the world as ideally organized according to an economic, rational, instrumental logic. Replacing the political with the economic allows a liberal order to imagine that it could produce a global system based on rational exchange and instrumental compromises.
Second, liberalism relies upon the specific, moral, and legal reasons for individuals to embrace a social order. One refrains from violence, in this model, not because of a concern for the well-being of a collectivity, but because violence is immoral and illegal; one avoids doing harm not out of a positive love of one's community, but because harming others makes one a bad person. Liberalism therefore depoliticizes by instrumentalizing on the one hand and individualizing on the other" (84-85).
"I don't like these choices. I don't like them because underwriting them is the belief that one's aesthetic politics is a moral matter. Beyonce is an unjustified capitalist (bad) or a secret radical (good) or just making a living like anyone else (good). I don't care whether Beyonce is a bad person or a good person. I care what her art offers us politically, and, for me, that is not a matter of good or bad; it's a matter of how her work addresses the distribution of power" (97).
"Stories of being bad people show us what compromise means for people with access to privilege. They tell us that we will, with very few exceptions, accept the deal" (117).
"This is how political questions get turned into moral ones, making the remedy for deep and enduring systems of injustice a matter of sorting out good people and bad people. But moralizing politics in this way risks producing situations like the Kavanaugh hearings, situations in which people get so tired of trying to be good that they vociferously justify their badness. This is one way to read the appeal of neofascist groups such as the Proud Boys, who proudly identify as 'male chauvinist.' The fear of being exposed as a bad person is exhausting. After a while, it makes sense that some people would just say, *yes, I am bad. And look how very bad I can be*" (123).
"In his book A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM, the scholar David Harvey offers a convincing account of this process. Because, he writes, the 1960s social movements were so focused on freedom as a value, the institution of neoliberal policies in the 1970s and 80s--policies that included union busting, privatization of public resources, the destruction of the social safety net, and so on--could be 'backed up by a practical strategy that emphasized the liberty of consumer choice.' The freedom to buy replaced appeals for freedom of expression and assembly, freedom from persecution by the state. Perversely, neoliberalism looked like the counterculture achieved by other means" (163).
"Sontag writes that fascist aesthetics 'are perhaps only a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice" (163).
"I would add that the choices provided by this 'affluent society' were mostly false choices, commercial choices premised on the furthering of the structural violence of capitalism. If neoliberalism substituted market freedom for freedom from structural inequality, the erotic pull of fascist aesthetics may be the consequence of the hollowness of that substitution. Or, put another way, fascist aesthetics emerge because neoliberalism produces, for its most privileged subjects, empty choices, empty freedoms. And the intolerability of living with that meaninglessness seeps into the presumed winners of the neoliberal game, creating a quiet form of misery one can easily see spinning over into the suicidal logic of fascism" (163).
"For Benjamin, aestheticizing politics means giving the masses opportunities for political expression without changing their fundamental structural conditions. You get marches and rallies, but not economic equality. You can have movies, posters, books, and newsletters, but not healthcare" (165).
"Kind of Blue is a perfect dinner party sound track because it activates a feeling of nostalgia for a certain type of college-educated, left-leaning dinner party-holding, New-Yorker-reading kind of person" (42).
"In THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EMOTION, Sara Ahmed argues that sticky objects are those that take on emotion as they move from person to person, gathering histories--both real and imagined--and dense, often hidden, associations that carry with them intense feelings. What sticks, she suggests, is not so much the work itself, but the feelings that become attached to the work" (54).
"Neoliberalism was becoming more than a set of policies; it was changing the horizon of expectations for individuals in a range of activities. As institutions were explicitly privatized or made to adhere to free market principles, it became harder to imagine that one's activities could meaningfully resist the market" (66).
"Writing in German during the golden age of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt develops his concept of the political in response to what he sees as a failure of liberalism. This moment, which saw the institution of the ill fated League of Nations and imagined that the end of the Great War would lead to the advent of a new age of peace, is one that Schmitt sees as an age of 'neutralizations and depoliticizations,' of the attempt to erase long-standing oppositions between friends and enemies.
This erasure, he explains, is accomplished by the substitution of two liberal tendencies in place of the political.
First, liberalism sees the world as ideally organized according to an economic, rational, instrumental logic. Replacing the political with the economic allows a liberal order to imagine that it could produce a global system based on rational exchange and instrumental compromises.
Second, liberalism relies upon the specific, moral, and legal reasons for individuals to embrace a social order. One refrains from violence, in this model, not because of a concern for the well-being of a collectivity, but because violence is immoral and illegal; one avoids doing harm not out of a positive love of one's community, but because harming others makes one a bad person. Liberalism therefore depoliticizes by instrumentalizing on the one hand and individualizing on the other" (84-85).
"I don't like these choices. I don't like them because underwriting them is the belief that one's aesthetic politics is a moral matter. Beyonce is an unjustified capitalist (bad) or a secret radical (good) or just making a living like anyone else (good). I don't care whether Beyonce is a bad person or a good person. I care what her art offers us politically, and, for me, that is not a matter of good or bad; it's a matter of how her work addresses the distribution of power" (97).
"Stories of being bad people show us what compromise means for people with access to privilege. They tell us that we will, with very few exceptions, accept the deal" (117).
"This is how political questions get turned into moral ones, making the remedy for deep and enduring systems of injustice a matter of sorting out good people and bad people. But moralizing politics in this way risks producing situations like the Kavanaugh hearings, situations in which people get so tired of trying to be good that they vociferously justify their badness. This is one way to read the appeal of neofascist groups such as the Proud Boys, who proudly identify as 'male chauvinist.' The fear of being exposed as a bad person is exhausting. After a while, it makes sense that some people would just say, *yes, I am bad. And look how very bad I can be*" (123).
"In his book A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM, the scholar David Harvey offers a convincing account of this process. Because, he writes, the 1960s social movements were so focused on freedom as a value, the institution of neoliberal policies in the 1970s and 80s--policies that included union busting, privatization of public resources, the destruction of the social safety net, and so on--could be 'backed up by a practical strategy that emphasized the liberty of consumer choice.' The freedom to buy replaced appeals for freedom of expression and assembly, freedom from persecution by the state. Perversely, neoliberalism looked like the counterculture achieved by other means" (163).
"Sontag writes that fascist aesthetics 'are perhaps only a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice" (163).
"I would add that the choices provided by this 'affluent society' were mostly false choices, commercial choices premised on the furthering of the structural violence of capitalism. If neoliberalism substituted market freedom for freedom from structural inequality, the erotic pull of fascist aesthetics may be the consequence of the hollowness of that substitution. Or, put another way, fascist aesthetics emerge because neoliberalism produces, for its most privileged subjects, empty choices, empty freedoms. And the intolerability of living with that meaninglessness seeps into the presumed winners of the neoliberal game, creating a quiet form of misery one can easily see spinning over into the suicidal logic of fascism" (163).
"For Benjamin, aestheticizing politics means giving the masses opportunities for political expression without changing their fundamental structural conditions. You get marches and rallies, but not economic equality. You can have movies, posters, books, and newsletters, but not healthcare" (165).
March 25, 2021
There have been several books of essays that I've read where I really didn't find that much to disagree on. I've mostly shared the politics of the author and was happy to just glide along with the flow and nod my head every so often. And while I certainly agreed with a lot of what Rachel Greenwald Smith had to say, I did find myself silently arguing with aspects of this book. This is certainly not meant as a critique, since I think it's easy to just acquiesce or (dare I say) compromise with a well-argued essay. Therefore it was actually stimulating when I disagreed with her because it forced me to think through some of my own politics and hone my own arguments.
The main thesis of hers hard to disagree with and very timely: in America we often see compromise as a good end in itself. Politicians, like Manchin, will make this their whole persona--"look, I'll get a drink with a republican and we'll work out a great deal together"--, which, to Smith, is a big reason why our status quo is so broken. I agree with her wholeheartedly about how those of us who are left of center should stop pretending like we can make cut deals with the right and should unite to actually change the status quo for the better. If we have political power, let's use it instead of negotiating against ourselves for that ol' bi-partisan feeling.
One thing I did think about a whole lot when reading this book was how she often seemed to bring in examples to really bring fire to her argument that were representative of the far right. I didn't see how remarking that Ayn Rand. the proud-boy fascist Gavin whatever, and a literal Nazi Schmitt made interesting points about liberalism is a feather in her cap. It's examples like this that might make otherwise sympathetic readers put off.
Our status quo, as I mentioned above, is indeed broken and has to change, but, to me, in even worse threat is giving any legitimacy to the far right. And her proudly writing about the virtues of illiberalism also, I think, flirts with this far right, when I feel there should be something of a common front against them.
Yes, their rise can and should certainly be traced to how the establishment (first Reagan and then both parties in the 90s) have used neo-liberal techniques to fuck over the working class (and now the middle class), but you don't need to borrow tactics or critiques from, again, literal Nazis, to condemn this and work for political change.
Still, I recommend this book. I didn't touch on any of the literary analysis she brings to this book, which is interesting as well, and certainly worth another review. Just not right now. (Goodreads breathes a collective sigh of relief).
The main thesis of hers hard to disagree with and very timely: in America we often see compromise as a good end in itself. Politicians, like Manchin, will make this their whole persona--"look, I'll get a drink with a republican and we'll work out a great deal together"--, which, to Smith, is a big reason why our status quo is so broken. I agree with her wholeheartedly about how those of us who are left of center should stop pretending like we can make cut deals with the right and should unite to actually change the status quo for the better. If we have political power, let's use it instead of negotiating against ourselves for that ol' bi-partisan feeling.
One thing I did think about a whole lot when reading this book was how she often seemed to bring in examples to really bring fire to her argument that were representative of the far right. I didn't see how remarking that Ayn Rand. the proud-boy fascist Gavin whatever, and a literal Nazi Schmitt made interesting points about liberalism is a feather in her cap. It's examples like this that might make otherwise sympathetic readers put off.
Our status quo, as I mentioned above, is indeed broken and has to change, but, to me, in even worse threat is giving any legitimacy to the far right. And her proudly writing about the virtues of illiberalism also, I think, flirts with this far right, when I feel there should be something of a common front against them.
Yes, their rise can and should certainly be traced to how the establishment (first Reagan and then both parties in the 90s) have used neo-liberal techniques to fuck over the working class (and now the middle class), but you don't need to borrow tactics or critiques from, again, literal Nazis, to condemn this and work for political change.
Still, I recommend this book. I didn't touch on any of the literary analysis she brings to this book, which is interesting as well, and certainly worth another review. Just not right now. (Goodreads breathes a collective sigh of relief).
August 23, 2021
Ce n’est pas le livre auquel je m’attendais, certes, mais ce n’est pas pour ça que je donne deux étoiles. Il y a plusieurs essayistes avec lesquels.les je suis en désaccord, mais qui me donnent envie d’argumenter. Rachel Greenwald Smith me donne juste envie de rouler les yeux et de soupirer d’exaspération.
Ça s’en va direct dans la Boîte à livre sur Cartier, si jamais ça intéresse quelqu’un.
Ça s’en va direct dans la Boîte à livre sur Cartier, si jamais ça intéresse quelqu’un.
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October 21, 2021On Compromise is intoxicating. Rather than working within the familiar accommodations of a more conventionally journalistic/political account, Smith examines notions of compromise in unexpected contexts: her time playing bass in a female-fronted post-punk band; the Riot Grrrl movement; Foucault and the Iowa Writers' Workshop; Beyoncé's Formation, the sonnet form, and what it means to be a "Black Bill Gates in the making"; the Obama presidency and Miles Davis's Kind of Blue; the desire to be seen as 'good', explored via Orange Is the New Black, Karl Ove Knausgaard and the Kavanaugh hearings; novels and Netflix shows whose visibility is indexed to algorithmic indications of audience popularity and the size of their creator's advance (Ben Lerner, Jennifer Egan, Percival Everett's brilliant Erasure, which is being reprinted this September with a new foreword from Brandon Taylor, all feature, along with the 're-segregation' project in Paul Beatty's The Sellout).
Continue reading: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-0...
Continue reading: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-0...
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September 16, 2021On Compromise: Art, Politics and the Fate of an American Ideal is a Civilization and its Discontents for post-punk grouches, Left-Aggressives with a little too much caffeine in their Thanatos. Just as Freud took a pre-Crash minute to reflect on the death drive having engulfed Europe in totalitarianism a decade prior to his paper, Smith took the Trump Interregnum to reflect on Obama's compromise aesthetics -- the aesthetics, as Byung-Chul Han has called it, of the smooth. Smith sees this in hybrid aesthetics, the commodification of a compromise style endeavoring to steepen our pleasure in doing compromise, as opposed to something like being nice. Smith deploys discourse analysis with a parodic eye and develops, in her chapters, a Gallery of Vernacular Affects: Accept the Deal, Indulge the Needle Drop, Selling Out [on Warhol-type emulation], No Compromise [on Riot Grrrl], Leaning In [to my Neighbor's Heart], each a trope in Walter Benjamin's aestheticization of the political, offering Smith performative space to argue further against what she's arguing for (that American "Ideal" of the book's real subtitle -- not what we see above).
In true Achievement-cohort style it's the performance that's centered and the channels of the superego's frequencies get a little crossed: in the Obama chapter, e.g., Obama stylization of centrist politics is compared to two distinct needle-drops, the one on the bus in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), in which the band-tensions within the fictional rock group Stillwater simmer when Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" (1972) drops into the bus sound system, a moment of on-the-road solidarity Smith views through the lens of nostalgia for a moment of high rock crit discourse; and in the author's own needle-drop, of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, represented as a pre-dinner party host's compromise with her hopes for the social comity to come. The irony here is deliciously parodic (c.f. Thumbledown or Juliet, Naked) of academic pretension, but I'm surprised Smith, presumably a reader of Davis's autobiography, doesn't see this as a bit of a troping I'm going to call Catapult ["did we miss anything?"], for she's too young to be in either Davis' or the Allman Brothers' (real-world model for Stillwater) cohort. Point being, the two "texts" (Kind of Blue and say, Live at the Fillmore East] don't operate in distinct discourses, so the resistance to intertextual reading reads as impatience with listening, which for Freud would be the erotic act. Another way to make the same point would be to ask, bluntly, Is post-bop a "compromise aesthetic"? It seems any discussion of Miles within the formalist framework could scarcely evade the question. Davis was on one kind of career-trajectory at the mid-August 1959 release of Kind of Blue (a fallow period for rock 'n' roll); a week later, Davis was severely beaten outside Birdland whence his career followed a very different trajectory. The bother is whether the historical actors (Crowe, John, Davis, The Allmans, Obama) are viewed as contingent as the tropes that allow for the acrobatic catapulting of them.
In true Achievement-cohort style it's the performance that's centered and the channels of the superego's frequencies get a little crossed: in the Obama chapter, e.g., Obama stylization of centrist politics is compared to two distinct needle-drops, the one on the bus in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), in which the band-tensions within the fictional rock group Stillwater simmer when Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" (1972) drops into the bus sound system, a moment of on-the-road solidarity Smith views through the lens of nostalgia for a moment of high rock crit discourse; and in the author's own needle-drop, of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, represented as a pre-dinner party host's compromise with her hopes for the social comity to come. The irony here is deliciously parodic (c.f. Thumbledown or Juliet, Naked) of academic pretension, but I'm surprised Smith, presumably a reader of Davis's autobiography, doesn't see this as a bit of a troping I'm going to call Catapult ["did we miss anything?"], for she's too young to be in either Davis' or the Allman Brothers' (real-world model for Stillwater) cohort. Point being, the two "texts" (Kind of Blue and say, Live at the Fillmore East] don't operate in distinct discourses, so the resistance to intertextual reading reads as impatience with listening, which for Freud would be the erotic act. Another way to make the same point would be to ask, bluntly, Is post-bop a "compromise aesthetic"? It seems any discussion of Miles within the formalist framework could scarcely evade the question. Davis was on one kind of career-trajectory at the mid-August 1959 release of Kind of Blue (a fallow period for rock 'n' roll); a week later, Davis was severely beaten outside Birdland whence his career followed a very different trajectory. The bother is whether the historical actors (Crowe, John, Davis, The Allmans, Obama) are viewed as contingent as the tropes that allow for the acrobatic catapulting of them.
July 13, 2022
This is an engaging, if slightly loose, collection of essays that looks at topics and experiences of compromise in relation to American history, culture, art and politics. I find the topic of compromise fascinating, and Greenwald Smith does a great job of talking about its more problematic aspects.
There are interesting examples of both compromising and uncompromising stances and dilemmas in terms of how we live our lives, make or respond to art, and engage in politics.
The American backdrop often relates to a history of racism, creative writing culture, musical movements, Trump-era politics, and the pandemic/virus period.
I did find some of the anecdotes and allusions a bit idiosyncratic at times, but also honest and transparent and thoughtful. Sometimes it is so much of a loose collage that it strays a bit perhaps from the core theme of compromise. But this is not intended as a formal academic tome on compromise, that would be a different type of book.
Nevertheless, the book is arguably at its best when it is tackling conceptions of compromise head on - unpacking notions of aesthetic compromise, and advocating compromise as a means to a better end rather than a complacent end in itself.
No easy answers, but plenty of food for thought, and to some extent a defense of being uncompromising in trying to speak up for the most vulnerable, and expressing hopes for a better system than neoliberal capitalism.
There are interesting examples of both compromising and uncompromising stances and dilemmas in terms of how we live our lives, make or respond to art, and engage in politics.
The American backdrop often relates to a history of racism, creative writing culture, musical movements, Trump-era politics, and the pandemic/virus period.
I did find some of the anecdotes and allusions a bit idiosyncratic at times, but also honest and transparent and thoughtful. Sometimes it is so much of a loose collage that it strays a bit perhaps from the core theme of compromise. But this is not intended as a formal academic tome on compromise, that would be a different type of book.
Nevertheless, the book is arguably at its best when it is tackling conceptions of compromise head on - unpacking notions of aesthetic compromise, and advocating compromise as a means to a better end rather than a complacent end in itself.
No easy answers, but plenty of food for thought, and to some extent a defense of being uncompromising in trying to speak up for the most vulnerable, and expressing hopes for a better system than neoliberal capitalism.
April 7, 2021
An excellent and very topical read that provides sweeping overviews in some--but not all--of the ways in which society expects, and almost demands we compromise. From the books we read, to the celebrities we look up to, to the laws that govern us, we've reached a point where it feels as though compromise is the end goal of any agenda, despite compromises by design requiring sacrifices (often human rights and liberties--especially for minorities). I found this book to be very thought provoking, and found myself bringing up points made in On Compromise in conversations.
I especially enjoyed the essays "Her Hand on My Octave," "The Missouri Compromise," and "Compromise in Lockdown." Up until this point I haven't really cared to read literature or commentary on the state of lockdown since it's felt very draining to hear commentary about my lived reality while I have no promise of the status quo changing any time soon, but I felt her essay on the compromises of lockdown and how we've expected the virus to relent to us since we've done our part felt entirely spot on to my experiences and interactions this past year and it felt validating to have them immortalized in published literature.
I especially enjoyed the essays "Her Hand on My Octave," "The Missouri Compromise," and "Compromise in Lockdown." Up until this point I haven't really cared to read literature or commentary on the state of lockdown since it's felt very draining to hear commentary about my lived reality while I have no promise of the status quo changing any time soon, but I felt her essay on the compromises of lockdown and how we've expected the virus to relent to us since we've done our part felt entirely spot on to my experiences and interactions this past year and it felt validating to have them immortalized in published literature.
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August 9, 2023Rachel Greenwald Smith se plantea contra la idea del compromiso, de llegar a acuerdos como meta de la política y que estos, contrario a la idea generalizada, lo que hacen es permitir que avances agendas radicales y que como tal ponen en jaque a la idea misma de liberalismo que, considera, está en la raíz del pensamiento estadounidense. Como ejemplo presenta los políticas que Obama intentó implementar, en las que garantizaba compromisos tanto para la izquierda como para los republicanos y que estos, de todos modos, terminaron rechazando.
March 1, 2022
Important book for somebody like me to read... I tend to default to compromise, and Smith reminds me that compromise should never be the end goal, but a means toward an end. I'll never be Smith, but I can stand up taller and be heard. The arts sections, though I know important to her argument, were a bit too dense for me.
May 7, 2021
A great, thought-provoking read. Particularly amusing— after finishing the book, reading a review that the author anticipates IN THE TEXT.
December 2, 2021
Will review soon probably maybe
March 27, 2022
We should ask ourselves this: are we compromising as a means or compromising as an end? This becomes the paradox, the dilemma, the very notion that gets us closer to understanding who we are.
June 12, 2024
I read this on the plane to and from Washington, DC, which felt like the perfect setting. A very thoughtful and thought-provoking book.
August 31, 2025
I haven't re-read this in a couple of years, but reading it truly did spark my love for political nonfiction. I would certainly recommend if my memory serves me right.
November 24, 2025
I am only a little bit biased- I did really enjoy it and the blend of personal narrative with political criticism was executed very well!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews